Crystal Lake Middle School Misprints Yearbook Leaving Out Special Education Students

CHICAGO (CBS) — The yearbook for a Crystal Lake middle school came out this week, but there were some big omissions – a number of students had been left out.

Rochelle Donahue, the mother of a 14-year-old special education 8th-grader at Bernotas Middle School noticed her son and his classmates had not been included in the yearbook.

Besides contacting the school, Donahue went on Facebook and posted what happened. 230 people shared it.

She said school administrators responded quickly.

“What they’re doing is they’re reprinting the yearbook and they’re re-distributing them to the children, to the students in the next few weeks,” Donahue said.

Donahue said she does not believe her son and his special education classmates were intentionally left out, but she calls what happened, “disheartening.”

“What I wanted to do was bring awareness to our kids. Our kids don’t necessarily get the exposure the other kids do,” she said.

A District 47 spokeswoman calls it an oversight, one the district regrets.

The full district statement:

“We regret this unfortunate oversight and are committed to highlighting the individual photos of all students in this commemorative book. We are working with our vendor to have the yearbooks reprinted to include all students and to accurately represent the Bernotas Viking family.”